Chapter 67: Sleepless Night

"Are you really not planning to stay a few more days?"

Black Coral's voice roused Fu Lan from his memories.

"No," he said. "There's still a lot to do. Besides, if the Magic Affairs Bureau really does track me down over the amusement park incident and finds out I'm abroad, things are going to get very troublesome."

Black Coral mused, "That's true... Oh, speaking of which, I don't think you actually need to worry too much about the hat. Even without DNA testing, insight magic could use it to pinpoint your location.

"But looking back at the whole process, they can't see any signs connecting you to the magical girl. If you were to sneak in and steal the hat just to eliminate evidence, it might backfire."

Fu Lan silently agreed; he had considered this possibility as well.

Black Coral continued, "And besides, the hat probably isn't even in the hands of the Magic Affairs Bureau right now."

"How so?"

"Just how god-like do you think their perspective has to be to connect a middle-aged man's hat dropped on the road to a magical girl incident? That hat was either swept away or picked up by the security guards who chased you, the latter being more likely."

"Hmm, makes sense..." Fu Lan said. He was indeed too prone to projecting the information he knew onto the Magic Affairs Bureau; most of the time, they weren't as smart as he imagined.

Black Coral said, "And I wouldn't recommend using insight magic to check the hat's location either. Whoever picked it up, if they really track it back to you, just candidly admit it. As an anxious father, rushing recklessly into an amusement park for his child is a completely normal thing to do."

"The main thing is, how do I explain how I dived into a pile of balloons and suddenly vanished?"

Black Coral analyzed, "That's simple. The security guards will only report this bizarre incident or mention you when the Magic Affairs Bureau investigates further.

"After all, aside from the Ferris wheel, you probably rank second among the weird occurrences that happened that day.

"And when interrogated, you just have to stick to your story that you took the opportunity to run off after the balloons scattered. Whether they saw it or the surveillance cameras caught it isn't your concern.

"You have witnesses both before and after the event, your motives for acting are fully explained, and more importantly, you're a man. In fact, that last point alone is enough to guarantee your safety."

Fu Lan pondered for a moment and finally agreed with her assessment.

"By the way, when you were gathering information on the Magic Affairs Bureau, did you happen to see someone named Li Xiaohan?" he suddenly remembered.

Black Coral wore a teasing smile. "Your ex-wife's good friend."

"Right, that's her..."

"Such a wonderful interpersonal relationship. Should we call it the twists of fate? She happens to be the deputy team leader of the Chord Heart Stone Task Force."

Fu Lan was momentarily stunned, and in the end, could only smile helplessly. "Then I'm doomed. After the accident, I went back to the amusement park to pick up a kid's bag and happened to run right into her investigating the case.

"Last time at the shopping plaza, before encountering those cockroaches and mosquitoes, I ran into her as well and was forced to chat for a bit."

Black Coral toyed with the ends of her hair. "Doomed? I wouldn't be so sure. What kind of image do you suppose you have in her eyes?"

Fu Lan pondered, "A pathetic divorced man, a broke middle-aged contract worker. For a while, she really disliked me, feeling that He Yue was out of her mind..."

"Your self-awareness is quite precise," Black Coral chuckled behind her hand, then turned serious. "That makes it even better. Just maintain that image in front of her and don't worry about those two chance encounters at the crime scenes.

"If things go smoothly, even if you transform right in front of her, she'll only suspect she's fallen under an illusion.

"Of course, that's exaggerating a bit. I'll keep a close eye on this Li Xiaohan and assess whether her intelligence poses a threat.

"However, I still need to accompany Requiem for the time being. I'm sorry I can't head over there right away; take good care of yourself."

Fu Lan shook his head guiltily. "No need to apologize, you've already helped a lot... Thank you, Black Coral. Now I owe you several favors."

Black Coral averted her gaze and asked timidly, "So... is my debt paid off now?"

"I actually... stopped blaming you a long time ago."

"Really?" She immediately looked over in surprise. "You don't blame me anymore?"

Fu Lan nodded.

Time could heal many wounds, and it also allowed one to examine oneself more rationally in retrospect, picking up the shattered pieces of the past to mend them in peace.

After tonight, he could appreciate the preciousness of the friendship among the five of them all the more. He had already lost two close friends; the treasures of life could no longer afford his squandering.

"Then when we reunited earlier, you always treated me like that," Black Coral muttered aggrievedly, kicking at the floor.

"My anger toward you wasn't that easy to dispel. In fact, to this day, I still find some of your actions hard to forgive," Fu Lan admitted. "However, I did indeed vent my bad mood on you back then, and I'm sorry."

Black Coral looked up and sighed. "It's fine. Actually, I know it really was a betrayal of the team. Even though we were nominally disbanded by then, I always felt we were still one.

"So whether I can be forgiven isn't something just you alone can decide."

With that, she cast a deep look toward Requiem's room. "I'll find a way to wake her up as soon as possible."

After Ravens's plane picked them up, Black Coral chose not to return to her own manor, but instead picked a nearby safe house as a temporary lodging for Requiem.

When Fu Lan had asked her why she didn't choose the much safer "Sanctuary," her answer was that it wasn't safe there.

After all, that was an experimental space, and not one she had pioneered. Although a castle had been built within it, the stability of the entire space remained to be tested, and it was hard for her alone to attend to both exploration and construction work in every aspect.

"If only they were still alive," Black Coral said with a touch of nostalgia. "The inheritance of just those two fellows alone would be enough for us to spend a lifetime comprehending."

After bidding her farewell, Fu Lan took the flight arranged by Ravens and went home.

Having spent the better part of the night tossing about on Ash Island, it was still the dead of night when he returned. Through twists and turns, dawn had been delayed by several hours, leaving him just enough time to catch some sleep.

As Fu Lan closed his weary eyes, Fu Linxing was experiencing a sleepless night...

...

...

In the evening, as the grey van stopped in front of Fu Lan, a ride-hailing car also pulled up in front of Fu Linxing.

He looked at Tao Zizi inside the car and got into the back seat alongside her.

Fine, this was still much better than the two of them walking away from the school gate together under the gaze of a crowd of classmates.

Tao Zizi didn't say a word in the car, and constrained by the driver's presence, Fu Linxing kept quiet too. When they got out, the driver couldn't help but look back at them, wondering what game these two middle schoolers were playing.

Tao Zizi lived in a small residential area facing the street, backed by an urban village. The so-called residential area consisted of only four or five buildings.

Entering her home, Fu Linxing experienced for the very first time the literal meaning of having bare walls and nothing else.

Yet he always felt that Tao Zizi's home was this way not out of poverty, but because she had proactively thrown away all unnecessary furniture.

After changing their shoes, Tao Zizi walked straight through the living room into her bedroom and spoke her first words since they met.

"Don't be scared, friend, it's just for effect."
Fu Linxing followed her in puzzlement, completely unhesitatingly stepping into his female classmate's boudoir, and saw a sight that made his hair stand on end.

The room was filled with photographs of *him*.

The ones pasted on the walls, clipped to hemp ropes, and fixed onto the large white board opposite the bed were all candid shots of him in various situations.

The white board even had various colored cotton threads connecting the photos, exactly like the clue display scenes in detective dramas.

"What have you done to me!" Fu Linxing exclaimed. "When were all of these taken?!"

Tao Zizi calmly explained, "Don't get excited. Just as I said, setting it up this way is simply because I think the effect is really cool."

"This doesn't cover up the fact that you've been crazily stalking and photographing me!"

"As I said before, I've had my eye on you for a long time," the suspected stalker female classmate said with a serious expression. "Not just as an assessment of a friend, but also as an assessment of a keeper of secrets."

Fu Linxing stared at her suspiciously. "What keeper of secrets?"

"To become friends, we should share secrets. Just like you said, friends must be sincere." Tao Zizi said casually while gathering up those photos as if nothing were amiss. "I originally wanted to tidy everything up and invite you over tomorrow, but classmate Fu, your words woke me up. Regarding this part, I should be just as honest with you."

Fu Linxing wiped his sweat, wishing she hadn't been quite so honest.

"Classmate Fu, this is my secret," Tao Zizi said suddenly without warning. "This house was my grandmother's. When I was two years old, my parents died in a magical girl runaway incident, and I was raised by my grandmother.

"When I was 10 years old, my grandmother passed away.

"When I was 12 years old, I became a magical girl."